So on Sunday, I went to Santa Ana California from Phoenix. Roughly 700 miles round trip to get this Douglas. This is now my second Douglas TV. The guy I got it from said he got it about 6 months ago from an estate sale. He had wanted to fix it, although he wasn't too sure how, but his wife told him no that it had to go.

The cabinet is nothing special. It does have a 27 inch picture tube. The other thing about Douglas, is that the controls for the tv and the turner are not in the tv cabinet, but in a chairside table. Originally the chairside table would have had a turntable in it, but this one was long gone.

The only difference between my other one and this one, is the chairside table. This one it has a pull out drawer where the turntable sat. My other one, the top flips up and the turntable is there.

The original picture tube was replaced in 1961. I haven't tested it yet to see if it is good. I'm hoping so.

The main reason why I got the set is because of the original paperwork that came with it. One is this brochure card. It talks about adding UHF to the TV. It also talks about how color TV is in the works and that, Douglas is making it easy to convert your TV from B&W to color. It states in 30 minutes or less, they could remove the picture tube and chassis and replace it with a color one. It suggested that the person wait until they started producing larger color TV screens, but that they would be willing to swap a smaller color screen into it. The last thing it mentions is "Pay As you go TV".

I found this picture online. It is supposedly a Douglas color TV from 54 or thereabouts. It appears that the cabinet is the same, but that the color TV was just swapped in, as their ad states they can do.

This is the other piece of paperwork that came with it. A dealer brochure. It shows the 3 different cabinet styles that you could get. The maple, mahogany, or oak. Both of mine are the mahogany. I've not seen either of the other styles before.

It did have a schematic for the tuner as well as a packing sheet. One other thing that was with it, was a printout of this thread viewtopic.php?f=3&t=195959&hilit=douglas+tv . I started that other thread about my other Douglas TV.

I was able to find this article in the LA Times about Roland Roesch "As a young man, Roesch began working alongside his father to help build their company, Douglas Roesch Inc. The company sold missile cables to aircraft companies.

I was able to find this article in the LA Times about Roland Roesch "As a young man, Roesch began working alongside his father to help build their company, Douglas Roesch Inc. The company sold missile cables to aircraft companies.

Very cool! There can't be many of those out there. Maybe this is the only one of this model? The chairside control is pretty unique. The only other example that comes to mind is the Predicta Tandem. Not too surprising that they never caught on. The remote control seems to have turned out to be a better idea.

On the other hand, in a slightly earlier era, chairside radios seemed to have done quite well, while the remote "Mystery Control" seems to have been a flop.

Considering that I have 2 of them (as I mentioned in the original post) it isn't the only one. There is another guy on this site that has one as well. I also seen a fourth one on an auction site online. All the same TV cabinet design. I have two different chairside tuners and according to their brochure there was one available without the turntable. I've not seen that version before. I'm unsure what tuner the other guy has or the one on the auction site.